


The Ants

by dreamsofghostsandstars



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Canon Compliant, Crossdressing, Identity Issues, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 22:40:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7550032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsofghostsandstars/pseuds/dreamsofghostsandstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Renfield tries to become someone his Master will love. Disclaimer: I do not own <em>Penny Dreadful</em> or anything original to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ants

**Author's Note:**

  * For [INCBlackbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/INCBlackbird/gifts).



**Renfield** watched the procession of ants, filing toward the sugar cubes as if they were a choir of little children heading to performance, filled to bursting with innocent blood. The ants as a group seemed so tiny, yet, when he focused on a single one, it appeared to grow until it loomed above all creatures he had seen in the Before, when he had not yet known the Master or grasped the power of blood. All things from Before had been insignificant; only the Master’s blood had given him eyes worth having. He imagined tearing his eyes from their sockets for their past inadequacy. Would the Master be pleased with that? Would he give Renfield the sacred blood for it?

Someone giggled; Renfield looked about the room, but saw no other human, only tiny-huge creatures full of blood. Perhaps it was the Master laughing. Perhaps Dracula’s brilliance even penetrated the walls of Renfield’s flat. Yes, no doubt that was the source of the laughter. The all-knowing Master saw the hilarity of the huge ants striding across the world, pulsing, red showing through the black, dwarfing the elephants and hippopotami and giraffes and even, as they somehow strode through the sea, the whales…

The sound of laughter grew. Renfield began to worry that it was directed at him, that the Master found his emptiness of blood pathetic and amusing. He felt parched, queasy, empty with the knowledge of the lack. Then he felt angry, for although his rational mind knew that it was a contradiction in terms for the Master to be wrong, he could not help but feel that he should have been given more. Yes, he was a good servant, a good Renfield; he deserved the Master’s blood. Yes, surely he would have it soon. The Master would no doubt let him feed when he next brought him news of Miss Ives.

Renfield was beginning to understand his appeal. He had but one Master, yet sometimes, when he looked at her, he felt as though he had another god, a queen whose blood fed all the night creatures. He could not forgive himself for his disloyalty, yet it remained. Perhaps, he thought, it might be excused. The Master’s blood pulsed inside of him. When he saw Miss Ives, it quickened, independent of Renfield’s true heart.

Yes, that was it. That was it, it was. Sometime he had begun eating the ants. He must have become a giant, to contain them. Giants they all were, now, all those who served the Master. He imagined himself looming above the mammoths of old times, above a landscape of red-spattered ice.

The ants turned into children, and he tried to drop the one that he was holding, but it clung to him. He screamed, high and pitiful, along with the child. Gradually his heart calmed and his screams ended as he realized what was happening. The child had the sense to recognize Dracula’s blood inside Renfield, and it wanted to come to him, to serve that blood. He licked it off his finger and swallowed.

The taste left him unsatisfied. He was grateful, yes, grateful, to be a master of the world and to hold dominion over all of its children, but only the blood of the one who dominated him would ever satisfy his needs. Or perhaps that of the lovely Miss Ives, the goddess whose red slick flesh rose from the foam of a crimson sea…

Traitor, he told himself. He couldn’t help himself. He fell asleep thinking of Miss Ives. What would it be like, to be like her, to be the one the Master wanted? Despite the stiffness of the corset that he hoped would make him more like her in the Master’s eyes, he knew that his head was on the table, drooling, as he nodded off.

 **Of course,** he had to be discreet by day. The Master had strictly forbidden discussion of him. Now and then Renfield would look around his office, wondering if his shouts of joy in the Master were echoing from the walls. Surely, if they were, he would die that night, but at least by his dear Master’s hands. Some part of him believed it would be worth it.

He watched as the beautiful Miss Ives seated herself in the office. She looked healthier than she had when they had first met, her color fair but good, her eyes brighter. Renfield imagined what her blood would look like and shivered. Such a delight, it was. It was not his fault, no, never, the Master’s blood wanted her, not Renfield, Renfield would never be faithless, not for all the cakes and puddings and pies in the world, not for the gleaming blood that poured from her veins now that they were open, open, gushing into the world, and somehow not, so that Vanessa Ives could walk unstained into the doctor’s room…

Her hair. It was slightly different today, the bun slightly higher. He would have to learn how to copy that. By day he still dressed as Renfield, but at night, he became the image of Vanessa Ives. He had a wig, not as glorious as the Mother’s hair—when had she become the Mother? When had she not been?—, but nonetheless dark and lustrous, which he twisted into shapes like the ones he saw on her head. He had corsets, satin-covered and with full cups that he stuffed and squeezed until he giggled with delight. Sometimes he overdid the makeup, and saw the reflection as a vulgar parody of Miss Ives. Then he trembled, wondering how disgusted the Master would be, and scrubbed it off with a vehemence that threatened to leave his face bleeding. He tried to perfect Miss Ives’s haughty stare, but could not. Miss Ives was a goddess, while Renfield was not yet fully transformed from his sordid human nature.

On his boldest nights, once his change was complete, he would sneak out of his apartment and search for his Master, but the Master only appeared when he wished, and that was never on Renfield’s schedule. How was Renfield to please him with his transformation, with his replacement of the goddess, if the Master would not look at him when Renfield was ready? He prepared himself to speak of it, each time they met, to tell the Master that he did not need to worry about the goddess, that Renfield was taking her nature for himself; but never would the words spring from his throat. Such was his awe that he could barely choke out the answers to the Master’s explicit questions.

At last came the night when he could appear before the Master in his new form, that of Miss Ives. He knew he was perfect, for the mirror had shown him her visage, his eyes as cold, his blood as hot beneath unblemished white skin. He had left work early to prepare himself for the meeting, had imagined it for hours. When he thought of the Master’s reaction, he felt the same sensations as the old Renfield’s body had known with the whores who thronged near Seward’s office when the sun went down; but when he reached to touch himself, he felt a cleft pubis and gelatinous slickness on supple folds.

Yet the Master did not mention his incredible transformation into a goddess, did not even seem to notice it. At the end of his questioning, Renfield managed to get out the words, “Master, do you not see me?” For a moment he thought he had sounded squeaky and frightened, before he realized that it had been husky and sweet, the voice of a goddess.

“Yes, my servant,” said Dracula. Around them writhed the other minions, contorting and smiling and making music, but none of them was like Renfield. None of them had become the Mother.

“Do you not see who I am?”

“Renfield. And you have been copying _her.”_

Why did the Master’s expression seem angry? How could that be possible, when Renfield brought him so much? He gave himself wholly to the Master, and what did he get? Anger. But it could not be anger. The Master would never make such a mistake.

No, Dracula was simply teasing him, drawing out the pleasure. Renfield took a full chest breath, unable to breathe lower, but inspired to let all the doomed creatures of Heaven and Hell know of their love. “No, my Master, you know not that. I have _become_ her!”

Dracula laughed at that. The sounds of the Master’s enthusiasm rang from all the rooftops of London; Renfield imagined them bouncing back from the onion domes of Moscow and the Inner City of Peking as well.

“I told you,” said that voice, that divine voice, the voice of the fallen angel, “to leave her alone.”

“Yes, Master, but now that I am her, you don’t need her. You only need me, Renfield, your Mother of Evil, your queen, your love.”

“You,” said Dracula. He reached for Renfield. “You, this rag of humanity, to be thrown aside? You should obey my instructions.”

“And I will, yes, I will,” protested Renfield, “every one, I will, yes, I will do whatever pleases you, whatever you have imagined—“

The precious touch, and Renfield landed against the wall of a building. For a moment his vision showed him nothing of the world, nothing but the lights and darkness of the shock, and he wondered if his face was broken. But no, he was a goddess now, it took more than—

“You,” said Dracula, “have betrayed me.” He stood just behind him now, and began pressing against him. His breath was warm and sweet and bore the taste of godhood to Renfield’s open mouth.

“Betrayed, no, never, never betrayed, I serve you in all things—“ Renfield babbled, horrified to hear his divinity slipping away, his voice returning to that of a weak, frightened man. But no, he was wrong, he was still Dracula’s queen, for the Master was lifting his skirts, one arm wrapping tightly around him so that the bones of his corset dug in and his chest pressed through thick lumps against the wall.

“Would you love me?” whispered the Master.

“Yes, yes, I love you, of course I love you, I do,” Renfield said. He imagined what the Master’s holy sex would feel like inside of his new feminine one, if he would give birth to their night creatures within a day or a normal span, the eons of rulership over all the Earth—

The pain stopped him short. No, this was wrong, this should not happen, it was not what was meant to be, this would not produce dark offspring. “No, Master, no! Why do you not use me as your wife, your queen?” He heard screaming, and it sounded like Renfield’s, but Renfield no longer existed, he had become Vanessa Ives. “How will I birth your shadows and your stars?”

“You,” Dracula said, his voice carrying some of the rhythms of his thrusting, “will do no such thing. You will serve me. You will serve my queen. You will serve us as we make love, as she becomes my bride, my Mother of Evil, as we realize our destiny. Amunet, Amunet, Amunet…” His voice changed to a murmur as he repeated the name over and over.

“But—Amunet is me!” Renfield cried. “I became your queen! Renfield is Amunet! I am your queen! I am your queen! I am your queen!”

 **The** goddess-bitch lay sleeping, exhausted from the perfect passion of the Master. Her corset remained in place, red like her blood, red, red, blood, blood, the thing that would finally make Renfield into her and let the Master see his worth.

He crawled across the floor, like a spider, a night creature. Her smell was as sweet as the Master’s, as the sugar one put in absinthe to help one drink its bitter medicine. He licked her salty skin, yet she did not awaken.

The Master was very, very good. Renfield was sure of it.

Just before he could bite, Dracula seized him. No, I was weak, Renfield thought, I have not betrayed you, I only meant to serve you better—

The Master lifted him and held him up, his face cold as the desolate world he meant to create. It was the face of utter rejection. Then he dropped Renfield.

Renfield fell in a heap. He fell like a man, like a common servant, not even like a night creature that knew how to spring and land on its feet. His tailbone ached from the impact, and he began to shake with shame for his betrayal.

He had seen, on Dracula’s face, not the expression of a god looking for his goddess, but of a man furious for his beloved; and, as a man, he was so familiar, so readable. Renfield knew which one of them was the goddess, and which one was beloved, and it was not him.

He scuttled away in self-loathing. When he got home, he realized that bits of the stuffing and packing disturbed by Dracula and Miss Ives’s lovemaking still clung to his clothing.


End file.
